Fashion designers have always been rather good at predicting the future or, rather, at observing society and events and developing trends that, in some ways, can provide us with a glimpse of the future. Yet, trying to foresee the future has become increasingly difficult not just for fashion designers but for all of us. Unexpected events have disrupted our collective existences in the last three years, from the Covid pandemic to the war in Ukraine, and the real impact of the Russian invasion will probably reveal itself in the next few months as world hunger crisis deepens.
Whether it is possible to predict it or not, the future remains an intriguing theme to explore, as proved also by the title of the next International Architecture Exhibition in Venice – "The Laboratory of the Future".
Kicking off in May 2023, the event will be curated by architectural academic, educator and novelist Lesley Lokko, founder and director of the African Futures Institute, established in Accra, Ghana, in 2020 as a postgraduate school of architecture, research centre and public events platform.
In a presentation about the Architecture Biennale, Lokko highlighted how we are living in complex times, with continuous tensions arising between nations, natives and newcomers, and social inequalities prevailing.
In the presentation, Lokko mentions questions of equity, resources, race, hope and fear and a place where all of them converge and coalesce - Africa.
At the Biennale, The Laboratory of the Future theme will be explored at different levels, starting with Africa conceived as one laboratory.
"We are the world's youngest continent, with an average age half that of Europe and the United States, and a decade younger than Asia," Lokko states about Africa. "We are the world's fastest urbanising continent, growing at a rate of almost 4% per year. This rapid and largely unplanned growth is generally at the expense of local environment and ecosystems, which put us at the coal face of climate change at both a regional and planetary level."
"We remain the most under-vaccinated continent at just 15%, yet recorded the fewest deaths and infections by a significant margin that the scientific community still can't quite explain. So often on the wrong side of history and hope, the resilience, self-reliance and long, long history of grass-roots community health care suddenly tipped the balance in our favour."
The other "laboratory of the future" is the Biennale, a place where speculations about the relevance of architecture to this world - and to the world to come, Lokko reminds us - take place.
"Today, the word 'laboratory' is more generally associated with scientific experimentation and conjures up images of a specific kind of room or building," the Artistic Director of the Biennale explains. "But Richard Sennett's examination of the word 'workshop', from which the word 'laboratory' stems, deepens the concept of collaborative endeavours in a different way. In the ancient world, in both China and Greece, the workshop was the most important institution anchoring civic life. In the aftermath of the American civil war, Booker T. Washington, an ex-slave, conceived a project in which freed slaves recovering from slavery would leave home, train at two model institutions, the Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, and return to their home communities. Importantly, during this temporary relocation, cooperation would be forged by direct experience and daily contact with one another as equals."
The Biennale of Architecture will therefore be in Lokko's words, "a kind of workshop, a laboratory where architects and practitioners across an expanded field of creative disciplines draw out examples from their contemporary practices that chart a path for the audience (...) to weave through, imagining for themselves what the future can hold."
Can the concept of laboratory as workshop be applied to other fields, fashion included? Of course. And, hopefully, there will be space in the Biennale for fashion-related architectural "laboratories of the future", from rediscovered and relaunched artisans' workshops to explorations of the textiles, garment and fashion industry in Africa.
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